Imogene in New Orleans

by Hunter Murphy

  “Because they don’t. I would’ve known if TH was actually Thurston. And he’s not done anything wrong.” Neil got creative in his attempt to escape his bounds, rubbing up against the edge of the kitchen cabinets and then rolling on his back. “Dammit.”

  “Why are you so keen on defending Thurston? What if he’s involved in this murder? If he didn’t actually do it, he’s played some part, probably a major one.”

  “Forget about Thurston for a minute,” Neil said. “We should be getting out of these restraints while Rogers is out of the room.” He pointed this out to his friend. “Well, don’t just sit there, Sister. Try to get loose yourself.” Neil apparently was finished talking about Thurston.

  “I’m trying, Neil, but it’s really hard to get out of handcuffs without a key.” Jackson was trying to shimmy out of the robe using his hips and his abdomen, but he wasn’t having any more luck than Neil was. The habit was riding above his waistline when Rogers stomped back in the kitchen.

  “What the hell are you turds doing? Trying to escape?” He stood over the two detainees. “I’ll throw y’all back in the closet where I found you.”

  “The hell you will, Rogers.” Neil spun around in place, as if he were about to put a move on the lieutenant. “You’ll untie us right now is what you’ll do.”

  Rogers raised his chin, and rubbed his dark, crew-cut head. It looked like he was considering what to do.

  Jackson hurried to pacify the lieutenant. “Don’t mind Neil. He’s just a little upset.”

  “A little upset?” Neil sputtered.

  “Yes, Neil. You really should watch your blood pressure,” Jackson said, sending a silent message for Neil to just shut up, then he turned back to Rogers. “Lieutenant, did you just call your partner in crime?”

  “Don’t worry who I called, Jackson Miller. It’s not any concern of yours.” He rotated the big police ring on his finger. It looked more like the end of a small barbell than a ring.

  “Lieutenant, have you considered my proposition to let us ride with you to get the art work? We could stay in the backseat of your car. Neil and I won’t escape. We can’t.”

  Neil apparently could not just keep quiet. “And if you don’t, Lieutenant, then you really will lose your job today. I’ll call the city councilor so quick your meaty head will twist in place.”

  “Shhh, Neil. Cool it.” Jackson looked up at the officer, who sighed a deep, sad sigh.

  “All right, boys,” Rogers said. “I’m pulling the car next to the house, and y’all are gonna get in the backseat. But if I hear so much as a peep, I’ll stuff your mouths again and dump you both in the bayou.” He rattled the keys in his pocket and exited through the kitchen door.

  As soon as Rogers was gone, Jackson looked over at Neil. , “Listen, Neil, you have to stay cool in order for this to work. We have him just where we want him.”

  “You’re wrong Jackson. He’s got us where he wants us. Look at you. You can’t move a muscle and you’re dressed like a nun. And I’m tied up like a prisoner. Dammit.” Neil shifted from one leg to the other in a last attempt to get loose before Rogers returned.

  They heard the car pull beside the house and a door slam. Rogers took two steps in the kitchen, reached down, and propped Neil against the island and then did the same to Jackson. Rogers refused to take the restraints off them, so when Jackson met the sun in that moss-covered courtyard behind Rogers’s house, he had his Mother Teresa outfit on and could do nothing about it.

  Neil nodded over at the corner of the house. “You see that, Jackson? There’s the curio cabinet that our brilliant officer here is hiding.” Rogers ran over to it.

  Jackson said, “Yes, that’s the very one from Imogene’s pictures—I mean, from the studio.”

  “Shut up, the both of you.” Rogers covered the curio with the tarp, grabbed the boys, and dragged them to the car.

  “Dammit, Rogers, stop squeezing so hard.” Neil fought him, but Jackson surrendered to the force, because his habit had swung in front of his eyes and he couldn’t see anything. He and Neil were immediately thrown into the backseat with all the force the lawman had. He shut them in and they crouched down low in the city vehicle with big seats and new upholstery. They were relatively comfortable, but Neil continued to struggle.

  “If you get up, I’ll shoot you,” Rogers said, after he heard the squirming.

  Neil said, “You’d be a fool to shoot us. We have three people in this city who know we’re at your house.” He laughed sarcastically. “You shoot us and you’ll sentence yourself.”

  Rogers turned around as he backed out of the driveway. “And who would those people be? Let me guess. Two old women and the nun’s partner?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Neil said. “You know more about us than you do about who tried to kill Glenway Gilbert. Instead of doing your job, you’ve focused on how to plunder from our friend and how to keep us from catching on.”

  Jackson joined in. “You didn’t even know the exact time of death until I pressed you about it. If you’d been more focused on the case, we wouldn’t have suspected you as much.”

  “Agreed,” Neil said. “It’s shameless. Our belief is that whoever stole the figurines is the same person who killed Glenway. That points to you, Rog. I wouldn’t doubt for one moment that you yourself did the deed.”

  Rogers huffed. He grabbed the steering wheel tighter as they exited the Quarter and then the city, crossing the bridge to Algiers. The afternoon sunlight was beating against the intricate metal framework at the top of the bridge. Rogers muttered underneath his breath that he was not going to take the “fairies” across in the ferry.

  Neil heard it and raised his voice. “Who the hell are you calling a fairy, you dim-witted slab of beef?”

  To hear such an apt description of the adversary would have amused Jackson under other circumstances, but he was thinking. He knew that if they were leaving the French Quarter and heading for Algiers Point, then the mysterious TH could not be Thurston, because Thurston lived in the Quarter near Glenway’s studio.

  After a few moments, Neil calmed down. He began asking Jackson some rhetorical questions “Hey, Jackson,” he said. “Tell me, who do you think would be dumb enough to steal from his own crime scene? Hmmm. I’m thinking of a certain officer, let’s see...Caucasian...Creole…boxy...with overbearing speech, an elephant’s gait, a ridiculous ineptitude with the human race and—”

  “Shut the hell up.” Rogers shook his big head in the front seat. Jackson saw him concentrating on the road as they neared the end of the bridge.

  “Just tell us where we’re going, Lieutenant,” Neil said. “I recognize some of the landmarks I’ve managed to see, and I know we’re near Glenway’s house.”

  Rogers glanced in the backseat. “That’s right. But when I stop, you guys stay down. If I see you looking out the window when we get to where we’re going, I’ll let my contact shoot you dead.”

  “Just who is this ‘contact’?” Neil asked, scooting forward.

  Jackson answered first. “It’s either Buddy or Lena or her son, Leonard…Catfish. Lena told us she lived over here, and I’ve been to Buddy’s house. You would already know about Buddy, if you’d been investigating the murder, Lieutenant.”

  “Shoot, I know all about Buddy anyhow. For six years, that hustler’s been running around with any man who’ll feed him. There aren’t many people in the city with an arrest record longer than his.” Rogers turned left onto a familiar street and then he took another turn.

  Neil stared at Rogers as if his gaze could burn a hole in the back of his head. Jackson didn’t know where they were, but it looked like Neil did, as he glared wide-eyed out the window. He leaned over, motioning for Jackson to see them passing the Mardi Gras museum in Algiers and the tops of the houses across the river.

  “Surely it’s not...” Jackson recognized some of the houses. He had been on that road recently. “I believe it is him. One more turn and we’ll—”

  “What are you sayin�
�� back there?” Rogers struck the console with his elbow.

  Neil said, “We’re just noticing what a beautiful day it is to be stashed away and handcuffed in the back of an undercover cop car.”

  Rogers huffed. “We’re just about there. You remember what I said. Keep your asses out of sight, unless you wanna be floating in the swamp.”

  Neil redoubled his efforts to free himself. The lieutenant had created a funky system of knots that apparently could only be undone by seeing them.

  Rogers drove down a side road, a tight alleyway of dirt and gravel, which crunched under the tires. Jackson saw fences come into view as the path narrowed considerably. The vines and bushes common in those Louisiana subtropics were growing over the wooden fences in cascades: trumpet, jasmine, wisteria, and bougainvillea. Jackson recognized another type too, one that Thomas Jefferson liked at Monticello, the purple hyacinth bean.

  Rogers parked the car under a low-hanging, Japanese maple tree. Its large canopy shaded the vehicle.

  Jackson heard Rogers unlatch the gun in his holster and then without turning around or moving his lips, he issued the same orders that he had been issuing the entire ride to Algiers.

  “You turds stay here in the floorboard.”

  “Just get out. Go on.” Neil frowned.

  Rogers muttered, “Assholes,” and exited the car.

  When he closed the door, Neil and Jackson let out a collective sigh of relief.

  “He always has to make a huge entrance and exit.” Jackson listened to Rogers march off. After a few moments, he eased his head over to the armrest to take a look outside. He saw a wooden fence, the gate slightly ajar, open just enough to allow a view of a familiar house. Buddy’s. Jackson scooted up onto the backseat and had a view of the studio through the glass in the house’s sunroom. He could see everything, the easels, the tarps, and the paint cloths. A framed piece of stained glass hung on a wall.

  “You’re gonna get yourself shot,” Neil said.

  Jackson ducked back into the floorboard. “Do you know who’ll shoot me?” Jackson had to whip his head around because part of the habit had fallen into his eyes.

  “Of course I do. It’s Buddy,” Neil said.

  Jackson gawked at him.

  Neil shrugged. “I guessed, because I recognized the neighborhood.”

  Jackson thought he was letting Neil in on a big secret, but Imogene was right. Neil knew every “pig trail” in the city and the surrounding areas. He knew where he was even with an obscured view and restraints. Jackson peered at his friend. It took him a minute, but he mustered up the courage to mention what happened at Thurston’s place.

  “Neil, Thurston told me that on the night of Glenway’s murder, he saw Allen at the ballet.”

  At the comment, Neil’s nostrils flared just above his mustache, the way Goose’s did when he was being forced to move during a nap. In fact, Jackson may as well have been standing in front of a real bull wearing Spanish red rather than the jet black of the habit.

  Neil didn’t speak, so Jackson continued. “I spoke with Thurston today in his condo in that marvelous nineteenth-century building on Royal Street.” He hoped that by pointing out the glory of Thurston’s abode, he could appeal to Neil’s deep love of the history and architecture of the city, hoping to make his friend relax. He was wrong.

  “What on earth were you doing in Thurston’s condominium?” Neil leaned closer, face-first. He got so close that Jackson saw a few hairs out of place on Neil’s mustache.

  “I followed him after he fled from the hotel manager. Billy and I had just arrived at the pool when Thurston dashed through the courtyard, and Hill stormed out, yammering like he does, the little snot of a man. Can you believe he had a gun stuffed in his pants? A real gun. He asked if Billy and I had seen Thurston, which of course we denied, and as soon as Hill was out of sight, I followed Thurston.”

  Neil grimaced. Jackson realized he needed to make his following Thurston sound much more innocent, so Neil wouldn’t be angry. “I wasn’t sure if Hill was going to shoot Thurston or not. He was flailing his arms around like a mother hen.”

  Neil sighed and looked at the window. “The truth is I didn’t know where Allen went on Thursday night. He and I fought about Glenway…and he left. I don’t doubt he went to the ballet. He and I often went with Glenway, but I knew if I followed him there, we’d just continue to fight. And frankly, I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was just worried about our friend not showing up for our weekly Thursday dinners. Allen said I needed to leave him alone and let him work it out, which is his usual idea about things. It made me mad, like I was doing wrong by worrying.”

  Neil paused and took a deep breath, then continued. “I didn’t like that Glenway had complained of the thefts all summer, and I didn’t like that he was living with a street hustler. I think Glenway died because he wouldn’t listen to me. That’s what I think.” Neil stared straight ahead at the back of the driver’s seat.

  Jackson saw a little moisture form in Neil’s eyes. He waited a moment, so that Neil could collect himself, even though he wanted more answers. His forehead started itching. He tried not to let it bother him, but the more he tried not to think about it, the more he thought about it. He leaned against the seat and scraped the corner with his head until his coif moved a few inches back and forth. It was like lifting the lid off a pot of cooked beans. He could feel the heat releasing from his crown and he closed his eyes from the goodness of it. “May I ask you something else, Neil?”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you visited this place often? I mean, Glenway’s place in Algiers? You said you only visited it two or three times—”

  “No, Jackson, I didn’t say that. Allen said that. I visited Glenway’s more than two or three times, especially in the past couple months. He was hiding here with Buddy, and he had stopped acting like himself. However, he never acted like himself when he had a new romantic ‘project.’ I tried to get him to visit more, but he wouldn’t leave the hustler. At one point, I told him I thought Buddy was the one stealing his figurines, and since we’re here in the alley behind his house, I was probably right.”

  Jackson felt the sweat roll down his forehead. He didn’t mention that Buddy had already told on Neil for the many visits. He wondered why Allen had lied, though, about being at the ballet on the night of the murder and about the number of times Neil went to see Glenway in Algiers.

  Jackson noticed the corner of the fence where Buddy lived, where the bougainvillea and wisteria and trumpet vine stopped. It looked as if someone had cut it back. He remembered seeing the same gap from Buddy’s sunroom, where Glenway painted. The gap was even more pronounced from the alley.

  “Hey, Neil, look at the way the vines on the fence stop so abruptly.” He nodded in the direction of the fence corner. Neil had to do quite a bit of maneuvering in the floorboard to try to look out the window, and he was exhausted from the struggle. He took a moment to catch his breath then peeked outside. “That’s odd. It looks like a fresh clearing.”

  The silence that followed was quickly punctured by a gunshot. “Hey,” Neil said. “What the hell?”

  More gunfire rang out in the alley, and Jackson craned his neck to look out the window. At first Jackson wasn’t sure if he was hearing gunfire or cars backfiring, but that was clarified when more rounds were shot in rapid succession. Several bullets hit the bumper on Rogers’s car.

  Neil buried his head in the back of the driver’s seat. “Duck, man. We’re under fire.”

  They heard someone running toward the car as more shots split the air. The footsteps got closer and closer—clod-hopping, purposeful steps, shifting in the dirt and gravel.

  Jackson heard the runner approach the car from twenty feet away. The crunch of the gravel got louder. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, a posture that befit his monastic garb. The footsteps were ten feet from the car and then five. He exhaled and then heard the words, “I’ve got to take these back or I lose everything!”

>   Twenty-Five

  Rogers’s voice reverberated. It had a fierce, ringing pitch, as if he were speaking through a megaphone. “I got to have these back now!” he yelled again as he reached the car door. Another round of bullets hit the trunk.

  Rogers called out to someone, but Jackson didn’t try to find out who. He stayed down in the floorboard. No way was he going to risk getting shot.

  Suddenly, Rogers swung the car door open, scowled at Jackson and Neil, and threw the duffel bag in the passenger seat. He slid behind the wheel and jammed the key in the ignition. “Don’t you turds know we’re being shot at?”

  Bullets whizzed past the car.

  Neil yelled, “No, you’re being shot at. We’re handcuffed and restrained back here in the floorboard.”

  Jackson said, “Who’s shooting? I thought that was you firing.”

  Rogers mashed his foot on the accelerator, sending the car swerving on the dirt alleyway. “You thought I was shooting at my own car?” A bullet pierced the trunk. Jackson and Neil ducked low in the seat.

  “Sonuvabitch. I’ll kill him.” Rogers jerked the wheel. The car bumped onto the paved road. He spun the car around with one hand and rolled down the window with the other.

  “Are you crazy? Why are you headed back to the gunfire? Let us out!” Neil squirmed in his restraints.

  “Shut your trap.” Rogers sped back down the alley, dust and dirt spinning out from the car’s tires. He pointed his gun through the window.

  Jackson and Neil bounced on the floorboard.

  “Damn.” A bullet whizzed by, too close for comfort, and Rogers ducked. It grazed the back window, and Jackson saw the glass slowly cracking in a spiderweb pattern with hundreds of tiny rivulets. Sunlight fragmented in the broken glass, and Jackson covered his head, thinking at any minute the broken window would come crashing down.